Earth Day is almost upon us. April 22nd is a day to think about the world we live in. There are many events going on around the country to get involved. Browse to earthday.ca to learn more. Use this as a reminder to focus on the environment around you and think of ways reduce your impact.
Javelin always strives to be an environmentally-conscience company by having energy-efficient offices, web-based services and training, and providing you with products that reduce waste and move towards a paper-less design experience. This Earth Day, we are planning some events to help out a bit more.
Garbage pickup event
Environmental documentary screening over lunch
Desk clean-out to recycle, reuse or donate those items buried under the mess
Consider starting an environmental team at your office to find new ways to reduce waste and save money. Encourage carpooling. Get energy-efficient lighting and appliances. Print on BOTH sides of the paper, or better yet don’t print that email at all.
Then take it personally by looking at home. Hang your laundry outside to dry. Walk to the grocery store for those small purchases. Bike to the exercise gym instead of driving (you may realize that you no longer need to jump on that stationary exercise bike!). Pick up some garbage around your neighbourhood. Reduce, reuse, recycle (in that order).
Options and Variants is a very powerful and yet easy to use design automation tool. In a short amount of time it helps designers configure systems to provide consistently accurate designs while saving an enormous amount of time and money.
There are so many E3 users raving about this functionality. Check out the video below to see how it works, how easy it is to add these options in your design and to control your design.
You can also check out the Options and Variants Blog series to get more details:
Starting in 2012, the Javelin Training Team has decided to give back to the environment to promote sustainable forests. We will be giving monthly donations to the not-for-profit, charitable organization TreeCanada (www.treecanada.ca).
The paper training manuals that are provided in our courses are important as you can read through the steps and exercises while having SolidWorks open on the computer for practice. At the end of the course, each student can take the manual home for additional practice and future reference. However the vast amount of fantastic information requires some hefty paper manuals. Since paper books are an invaluable resource available to everyone, we will help offset its carbon footprint by planting trees!
TreeCanada has been around since 1992 with a great vision and programs to get things done. They have planted and maintained 77 million trees since their beginning and have inspired individuals and corporations on the benefits of settled forests. Our donation can be used to plant 25 trees every month that will replenish our air. Breath easy!
With the holidays fast approaching, don’t lose sight of your efforts to help the earth. Think about making the switch to LED lights for your house. Try avoiding the wasteful wrapping paper that goes directly into the garbage. How about doing away the stacks of paper greeting cards and move to e-cards or start a blog with pictures and stories that you can share with friends and family.
Running out of ideas? Check out this lengthy list from planetgreen.com.
SolidWorks Sustainability was introduced back in 2010 to assist engineers design renewable products in the early stages. Here is an interesting article on this topic.
Did you know that the average person will buy 1-2 pairs of running shoes a year? If you use the population in Ontario only (~12M), that equates to almost 24M shoes a year! Also, it takes about 1000 years for a running shoe to biodegrade. Nike has come up with a great recycling program where each part of the running shoe is recycled to create sports surfaces such as running tracks, tennis courts, basketball courts, etc etc. Check out their website:
http://www.nikereuseashoe.com/ There is only one location in Canada at the moment that does this, hopefully more will be added this year!
If you were wondering, why not make a shoe that will biodegrade a little faster? Brooks has done just that by creating “The Green Silence”. This shoe will biodegrade in 20 years instead of 1000.
Several Javelin men have committed to grow a mustache for November as part Movember. Check out http://ca.movember.com/about/ for more information. If you feel like donating to the Javelin team, click here and search for “Javelin-Stache”.
As men across the globe raise funds for prostate cancer, we can also find ways to help the earth as we shave away the beards. There are 5 great tips at PlanetGreen.com.
1) Use an electric razor
2) Use a straight razor
3) Shave with olive oil
4) Shave less
5) Extend the use of disposable razors
